Harris Firefighter Mic

[mdsxfire]

we switched to our counties P25 P2 system about 2 years ago, we switched from motorola to harris radios. We are having a bunch of issues but the biggest one seems to be with the stock mics the portables came with seem to be police/ems mics, we found a Firefighter remote mic Model#EV-AE1W (YELLOW) OR U (BLACK). i have talked to a few depts that have these mics and love them. My question is we were told they were discontinued but when i search online i cant find anything to confirm that. I have tried contacting a few harris vendors but none have returned my calls.
The mic we are being told is the replacement is the same piece of garbage we use now just with a yellow speaker cover and a small round button. None of the harris mics i have seen (besides the Firefighter Mic) are made for gloved hands in a low/no visibility environment. We are trying to figure out cost to switch back to motorola but they are expensive and it doesnt seem we will be able to get any type of credit for these harris radios. Top pic is the mics we want, bottom pic is one of the mics they are offering. Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you

A

 

[DisasterGuy]

What is the problem you are having? We have seen some failures of the Otto Genesis mics (the rugged model that Harris sells as shown in your second picture) mostly related to the waterproof membrane that is part of it.

The Fire RSM that you show is indeed available however they arent cheap. If I recall they are about $500/ea. We have tested them and they do well however they are heavy, bulky and the cost is high.

For us our standard issue for cops is the Harris badged Otto Evolution mic (about $100/ea) and for Fire/EMS the Harris badged Otto Genesis (that you advise you are having issues with).

 

[mdsxfire]

We don’t have the Otto mics yet, we are using the standard mics (I’ll attach a pic). Our issue with these mics is our guys were all used to using the big F/F moto mic with the huge PTT button (the one with the flashlight) and a lot of our guys are paid F/F or LEO that still use moto, the Harris mic we are using has the speaker mute button right by the RTT button so it is easily hit while using a gloved hand and hard to even realize that u hit the button and now can barely hear. Another issue we have is the cord does not stand up to even minimal heat as evident at out last live burn with only a small amount hanging out of a jacket. The radios themselves have a very weak/low beep when the RTT is pushed as opposed to the moto triple tone so in a working fire or loud environment it’s hard to hear if your transmitting, Harris said this is not a changeable option so we can’t make the beep louder or longer, another radio issue we have is when the man down button is pushed a short low beep is given on the sending and receiving radios, no loud tone or visual clues that a man down was pushed as again opposed to moto man down. Unless u are staring at the display of the radio u don’t really know. Our desk is the only one that gets actual alert tones, again Harris states this is how the radios were designed.
So you are saying the big firefighter mics are still available??? Do u know which vendor I can contact to get pricing/availability from
Thank you again